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Skype announced today that it is getting into the SIP trunking business by allowing native SIP calls to be connected directly to its network allowing enterprise communications systems to communicate seamlessly with Skype's network of users. During the Beta period, calls are carried at current Skype rates.

What this news does is take out the middleman. There really is nothing new in this release as this exact functionality has been available from companies like VoSKY, Skip2PBX, Pika and even Digium/Asterisk.

One of the most maddening parts of traveling for me has to be finding hotels which have adequate bandwidth. Generally you have to learn the good properties from bad via trial and error. For those of us used to continuous and fast broadband access, having to wait for a computer to respond due to poor hotel connectivity is frustrating beyond belief. In this economy, many of us need to be more productive than ever and often work efficiency is directly related to speed of information access.

After $500,000 in development costs, FreedomVOICE has abandoned the Beta test of Newber, an application which blended the best of VoIP and location awareness to allow users to direct calls to various phones. The app even allows you to swap calls from phone to phone mid-conversation.

Newber was submitted to Apple on October 2, 2008 and after 165 days, Apple has not approved the application and worse it won't tell FreedomVoice anything. Interestingly Apple did approve the company's other application IQ Voicemail in about a month according to the company so there is something about the Newber app that Apple doesn't like.

After a long 20 months, Google took its purchase of Grand Central and launched it at Google Voice and added a nifty feature, voicemail transcription. When I heard the news I was curious as to what Jamie Siminoff of SimulScribe/PhoneTag thought about the news.

Jamie did not disappoint and came out swinging, explaining that Google can't sustain the business of providing this free service which costs the company $60/year/customer. He argues that ads cannot pay for this service - no way, no how - it is just too much money.

One of the most feature-rich phones around has to be the Grandstream GXV3140 IP Multimedia Phone. Grandstream was initially known as a low-cost provider of communications solutions but over time they have proven that they make low-cost solutions with solid quality.

This leads us to the end of this month when the company releases their new feature-rich videophone which has solid social networking features built-in.

Truphone Local Anywhere is likely one of the more revolutionary products/services you will see this year and consists of a single-SIM, multi-country mobile service that will make any mobile call within the set of supported countries a local call. It combines technology with roaming arbitrage and as company CEO Geraldine Wilson says is, "The ultimate phone service for people who have an international lifestyle."

If you find yourself in a situation where you are carrying around multiple SIM-cards or are getting charged high roaming fees, this service which will be available later this year is worth a look. Wilson tells me this service is about keeping you local and on one Truphone SIM.

The TMC Newsroom has been bustling with activity and lately we have had a chance to interview a number of the leaders in the communications space. Check out the TMC Video News Room home page for the latest and some of the recent interviews are below.

One thought - many of you in the communications space should ensure your CFOs listen to how well some companies in our space are doing in the interviews below. Why?

Company looks to differentiate itself from other headset vendors through software and innovation

Historically the headset was not an area of the communications space where people expected tremendous amounts of new technology. Certainly wireless standards like DECT and Bluetooth have brought headsets into the tech space but for Plantronics these were a stepping stone for tighter integration into the world of unified communications.

After 40 years of making industry-leading headsets, the company has now upped the ante by announcing a suite of new products which are designed to add intelligence, flexibility and ease-of-use to communications endpoints.

Great news for readers of TMCnet blogs. As you know we now have 40 bloggers and continue to innovate with technology and integration additions to our blogs which allow you to use your social networking login to comment on our blog entries. But that was so yesterday.

TMC has been aggressively adding new bloggers to its arsenal of content which attracts 2-3 million communications and tech decision makers worldwide each month. We are now at blogger number 40 and counting. We are still aggressively recruiting many more and if you can write and have something of value to contribute and want the most exposure you can get, drop Greg Galitzine (ggalitzine at tmcnet.com) a line ASAP to learn more.

TMC is one of the few media companies - in fact companies of any kind, growing in this market.